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500+ million users, 70% of Linkedin users are from Outside of Us. 40 million students and recent college graduates on LinkedIn. What’s in it for us! Well, LinkedIn has been kind enough to help us all leverage hashtags and find relevant topics easily. So now all you have to do is click on a hashtag that you see on LinkedIn or you can also search hashtags via the search box.

Here are a few examples of how you can find relevant topics via hashtags

a) This is a topic that I am keen to explore and learn. So all I have to do is enter this topic and filter it | People | Jobs | Companies | Groups | etc

b) There has been a lot of talk around #EmployeeExperience, so do leverage this and explore some amazing content using relevant hashtags

c) Great opportunity to find relevant topics that are of your interest such as DevOps, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning etc.

So how are you planning to leverage Hashtags on LinkedIn! Would be great to know your views, ideas around this interesting addition on LinkedIn.

There has been a lot of buzz about Health & Wellness. Some weeks back I feel fortunate to be part of a Tweet Chat organized by Life and Money and that did give me a fantastic opportunity to make some research on this important, however most of the time overlooked topic and gain my interest. You can follow #LnMChat on Twitter for more conversations around this topic.

Meanwhile, here are some insights that did help me learn more about why is Health & Wellness so important and need self-attention.

Indian wellness sector is at INR 500 billion and it is expected to hit the mark of $1 trillion by 2020.

In India, diabetic nephropathy is expected to develop in 6.6 million of the 30 million patients suffering from diabetes

Number of people with hypertension was 118.2 million in 2000 to 213.5 million by 2025

Some of us would say that this data is an eye-opener and we need to do something about it. Well, it’s great to see corporates doing their bit towards encouraging employees to take Health & Wellness seriously. Did see lot of action at Tieto that were in the right direction to encourage and inspire employees to work towards their Health & Wellness area. Some of them includes:

It’s also a great opportunity for us as employees to also leverage such programs. Health & Wellness is not just the responsibility of corporates, nevertheless it’s our responsibility to take care of our health. Would be great to also know and learn how is your company promoting and encouraging Health & Wellness programs.

PS: Organizations are going great length to support health & wellness but if individuals are not participating then it is just another initiative which would vanish soon.

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Who dare wins!!! Have you read this before? I’m sure most of you would have. It’s been long since I have been reading and hearing all sorts of things about “Do we need HR” “Can companies live without HR Function” and so on. Thanks to the so called tons and tons of HR Jargons that are being used these days, to confuse us and employees too. As they say, if you can’t convince, confuse them 😉 Let me take this opportunity to just say this : HR = HUMAN Resource “As long as we have Humans on earth (Soon Mars), they would need HR” That’s a BOLD statement right? Well, that’s the need of the hour and a fact too.

So, enough of convincing (Not Confusing) you all. Following post is all about getting to know the pulse of passionate working professionals about their views on “The Bold New HR”. This is an interesting theme that SHRM India has come up with this year for their Annual Event.

Let’s get started. There were just 3 questions that were asked to the audience and all they had to do was cast their vote. There were NOJARGONS used, nor was it an alien language, it was pure simple and to the point questions. Here you go:

Now that the results are out, I’m sure there would be loads of analysis, views, comments and suggestions. Feel free to add in your thoughts in the comments section of the blog. This will also help us as a HR community learn from each other.

PS : Do follow #SHRMI16 for some amazing insights around this BOLD theme – Dare : A Bold New HR

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” Twitter is my personalLearning management system“. This is a small attempt to share some of the best HR TweetChats of 2014. Twitter has been an amazing learning tool. Was fortunate to connect and learn from some amazing HR influencers via Twitter. There have been some amazing Tweetchats that did make 2014 an amazing learning year for me.

It’s time for the the 3rd Part of Best of HR TweetChats 2014. For those you might have missed on the first two parts, can catch up with it right here:

Best of HR TweetChats!!! If you ask me, I would stick out my neck and say ” Twitter is my personalLearning management system“. This is a small attempt to share some of the best HR TweetChats of 2014. Twitter has been an amazing learning tool. Was fortunate to connect and learn from some amazing HR influencers via Twitter. There have been some amazing Tweetchats that did make 2014 an amazing learning year for me.

Hence via this blog would like will share a series of such HR TweetChats and some interesting topics that were covered. This series will also include the Storify of these TweetChats that were conducted. So that you don’t miss out on any of the learning’s and can go through all the discussions, views and comments on various HR topics.

So here we go:

#Hrtrends

PlugHR sets up & runs HR department for companies for a fixed subscription bringing in the best HR practices,across sectors in 7 Indian Cities. They have Twitter Chats which Occurs every Thursday at 4:00pm IST. Hosted by – Rakshita Dwivedi : @Raks_d

They had some interesting topics in the year 2014. Following is a list of those topics for your reference. Just click on the topic you like and you can go through some interesting conversations by HR professionals.

Your Company has a Facebook Page! Twitter Handle! LinkedIn Company Page! If your answer is YES, then the following question is for you. Have you identified your Social Media Ambassadors!! Who are they? Where do they work? Loads of Questions, right. Let’s make it easy. Now a days almost every company is on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. They would like to increase their presence and increase their followers on Social Media Channels. Nothing wrong in that. They are all trying hard to build their social network. But are they forgetting something?

Yes you guessed it right. They missing out on their very own Brand Ambassadors on Social Media. Every company has a set of Social Media Ambassadors who have good amount of followers and are great influencer’s within their network. Yes, you read it right, every company has such employees. So have companies tried to identify them and make the most of their network? Well, some have, but most are still clueless about where they are and how to encourage them to promote their own company on Social Media Channels.

It it one thing to create a Company Twitter Account and other thing to promote it. Do you know how many in your company are on Twitter? I bet most of them will not have an answer. It’s important to build your internal network first and encourage your employees to embrace such powerful social channels. Companies need to train them, engage them and nurture them to use Social Channels. Then they need to identify top influencer’s from them and slowly develop them into their Social Media Ambassadors.

Companies have also created multiple Facebook Pages, but are these pages talking to each other? Are they even following each other? In this case too, companies must promote their Facebook Pages Internally and then encourage them to share relevant content within their networks. As every employee has his/her strong network on social channels. And companies must make the most of it.

LinkedIn is a channel where we by default mention our Company name and our designation. So is there a way we can ask all our employees on LinkedIn to share important links in their company sections, add videos, careers website url’s on their profile? Companies must realize that charity begins at home. In other word, promotion begins from internal networks and then one can go all out externally.

What’s “More” from LinkedIn !! Has LinkedIn launched a new service, or a new product !! Well, not really. We are talking about the “More” section on LinkedIn Page. It’s on the left side of the Search Box. This section has a lot of interesting things that can help recruiters and candidates. Some of you might wonder what is so special about this section. Also at times we miss out on this section too. This post is about those interesting applications that LinkedIn has to offer us.

More Section Details:

A) Answers:

This is an interesting section where you can go through questions that are posted by the professionals in your network. You can also post your answers related to your field and expertise. Not only this, you can also search for Answers using keywords about your area of interest.

For example : I wanted to know what kind of question/ answers are being discussed in my network related to Recruitment. So all I had to do was search for this key word, and the following page did give me desired result. – Advanced Answers Search

B) Learning Center:

This is a page wherein you can Learn about all of the different features you’ll find on LinkedIn. From a brief overview to detailed tips, you’ll find them in this section.

Learn about profiles

Find out how to get a new job

Use LinkedIn on your mobile phone

Get the answers to your questions with Answers

C) Skills:

Discover world-class professionals and related skills on LinkedIn !! Yes this is exactly what this section does for you. This section is very handy for recruiters for MI (Market Intelligence) that Recruiters have to do day in and day out. All you need to do is just enter the desired skill / Technology and LinkedIn will do the rest for you 🙂 You can read more in detail about it in the previous post “Discover world-class professionals and related skills on LinkedIn !!” Although this is a Beta version, but still it is very useful to gather precious information.

Applications:

– Events:

This particular Application is majorly used to Promote your event on LinkedIn. This way you can leverage the millions of professionals on LinkedIn to make your event a success. There has been a positive trend where in recruiters do promote their Weekend / Walk-In Drives that they conduct almost every week. As a candidate too this does help you to search out the Events that have been organised.

Polls is also a unique application from LinkedIn wherein you can ask a question and and the same time you can get feedback and the responses from your network. This also shows you the results of the questions that were posted, and the results are displayed in the category such as Overall Demographics (Age , Seniority , Gender ) One can also share the poll on Twitter and Facebook and get more responses from their network.

Company Buzz lets you tap into this information flow to find relevant trends and comments about your company. Install the application and instantly see what people are saying. You can Customize and Modify the topics and add new ones , you can see historical charts to track buzz and get the top words associated with your topic and quickly drill into see related tweets. Interesting right !!

Google Presentation:

Google presentations is a professional way to introduce yourself and your work. You can add a presentation to your LinkedIn profile to Showcase a recent talk or presentation or Display a visual portfolio of your professional accomplishments and also this way you can introduce yourself to recruiters and professional contacts viewing your profile. 🙂

SlideShare:

As you are aware of this news LinkedIn buys SlideShare cofounded by Indians for $118.75 million. SlideShare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. You can:

This is one of my favourite apps on LinkedIn, as with this you can sync your WordPress blog posts with your LinkedIn profile. Once added, you can filter your posts with a special LinkedIn tag and even display your personal WordPress Gravatar (global avatar). Updates are automatically sent to your network for instant notifications and gratification.

Box.net makes managing and sharing files simple. With this you can quickly and easily add virtually any type of file to your LinkedIn profile, so visitors can download and view them.

– If you’re recruiting, get your employees to spread job requisitions virtually by posting them to your profile.

– Looking for a job? Share your resume or portfolio on your LinkedIn profile and send it from Box to your LinkedIn contacts.

So are you Hungry for “More”, Well you don’t have to go far, all you need to do is just visit the More Section on your LinkedIn Profile and you will be amazed to see the applications that can help you to make the most of your LinkedIn Account.

Looking forward to know your feedback about the applications that you have already used, as this will help us to share and learn and create the best practices about using LinkedIn.

You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression; well this is so true in the case of a new joinee who has joined your organization. Every one of us at some point of time has been a new joinee, and do remember the 1st day at office. (New Office). Most of us do remember our 1st day at office.. Right…. Must be good, not so good and so on.. You might still remember the Buzz around you, all new faces, never ending sessions of introductions, lots of form filling activity and not to forget the most important part… “Induction”

No doubt that every company has their own way of welcoming a new joinee, and also might have a standard process to ensure that the joining of the candidate goes smoothly. But in all this at times we forget that this is a lasting impression that the new joinee might have…. 1st day at office.

Here are some basic tips for bringing new hires on board:

– Ensure that you give full attention to the new joinee. ie avoid keeping the candidate waiting in the lobby / reception, as this is the most common mistake we all end up making

– I know this point might not be always possible on the 1st day, but do try to set up the workstation of the candidate as soon as possible.

– It is always good to inform the joinee about the dress code of office well in advance, so that the candidate does not end up wearing a business suit on the day when you have casuals as dress code on that day;)

– Do ensure that the introduction mailer sent to the employees about the new joinee is checked and re-checked. This is the area where one has to be very careful, as any wrong information published might not be taken well by the new joinee.

– Don’t just end up giving all the forms to the candidate at one go. Keep a balanced approach; this will also give some breathing space to the new joinee 😉

– Ensure that you introduce the new joinee to the other employees. May be taking him for a small tour on the floor might be handy.

We always try to look at the bigger picture, but often we miss on the smaller details that end up affecting the smooth process of the new joinee. I am sure you too might want to share your comments and views about this topic. So, How was your first day at your office!!!!!!

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You might be thinking what kind of season is this – “Recruitment” Some might say that it goes on for 365 days, so what is so special about this season. Well, Its time for you to get rewarded for all your hard work last year. Its time for Ratings and Bonuses to be announced. Some companies have already announced it, some are going to very soon.

The reason for writing this post is to try and understand the process behind this season. Its a season when people switch, jump, hop and shift jobs. (% is more compared to other seasons) Every one has a right to do that, and after all its for betterment of their career.

Candidates are waiting for their revised salary(revised salary would include % hike that they are eligible for – depending upon their ratings), and Bonus. Its a perfect season this time, as thanks to the recession, companies were not able to match the expectations of their resources. But now the Market is OPEN, very much OPEN. Salaries are going sky high. Generic skills are selling like hot pan cakes, and their market value too is at an all time high.

So, why worry, every one is happy. Right…… May be… May be not……. This is just a start, the real problem will soon arise, once these candidates are out in market, with the revised letter from their companies, their expectations will also be high, in case they are looking for a change. Soit will be a tuff time for their future employers to hire them. Now a days 30 % hike is just normal (Hope you all agree on this)

So, it will be interesting to look at companies who will try to match their expectations (Most companies have announced 10 – 15 % average hike), so employers need to be ready to add 30% on top of 15%……. (45 % HIKE) Don’t be surprised, companies have to shell out money. It will be a real challenge to also retain the current employees, as well as to hire employees from the Market………